As computer systems throughout the world are becoming increasingly connected via the Internet, the uses for the Internet are similarly expanding. One rapidly growing use of the Internet is for electronic commerce, where merchants make goods and/or services available for purchase “on-line” via the Internet. Such purchases may be delivered via the Internet (e.g., software downloaded from the merchant to the purchaser's computer) or alternatively delivered via more traditional in-person routes (e.g., mailing a product using the postal service).
Although the types and sources of goods and/or services available for purchase on-line have increased, difficulties have been encountered in providing a way for users to pay for these purchases. Many on-line merchants allow a user to establish an account at a merchant's server computer and enter various user-specific information (such as name, credit card number, credit card billing address, shipping address, telephone number to contact in case of problems, etc.). Unfortunately, this requires the user to enter such information repeatedly—at least once for each merchant he or she is using. Additionally, some merchants make the process of changing the user-specific information cumbersome, forcing a user that uses multiple different credit cards to re-enter information each time a different credit card is used.
In addition to standard credit cards, users can now purchase goods online using a plethora of new payment accounts. These new payment accounts include standard bank debit cards, electronic gift certificates, reward accounts, rebate accounts, teen cards, and various other types of accounts. These payment accounts are often “virtual”, meaning that no physical card is issued to the consumer. Purchasing with an account like this means that the user needs to write down the appropriate information for the payment account, such as account number and expiration date so that s/he can enter it at the time of checkout at the merchant site. The piece of paper this information is recorded on is often misplaced by the user and is therefore not available at the time of purchase.
Many of these new payment accounts are based on traditional credit cards (e.g. Visa®, MasterCard®, American Express®, Discover®) with a different marketing wrapper or veneer. So, the “XYZ” Internet portal may offer users a rewards account that is similar to a Visa® card, but with the Visa®) branding either removed completely or only subtly displayed (and a credit associated therewith). The advantage of using the existing credit card settlement network is that merchants do not have to do any work (or little work) to accept these new payment accounts on their web site. The downside is that the user may be expecting to see on the merchant site a payment choice called “XYZ Reward Account” but instead only sees Visa®, MasterCard, and American Express as available options. It is often not readily apparent to the consumer that s/he needs to enter the reward account information into the merchant site as a Visa® card.
Yet another issue with these new payment accounts is that the available balance in the account is usually quite a bit less than the credit that is available on a traditional credit card. For instance, an electronic gift certificate may have a balance of $20. This low balance greatly increases the probability that the user will attempt to purchase an item whose total cost exceeds the amount in the account. Unfortunately the user may not realize this until after the merchant denies the purchase due to insufficient funds. Additionally, merchants are often unable to accept multiple payment mechanisms for a single purchase, as the user interface to do this is difficult and usually confusing to the end-user, especially when different merchants implement this in different ways.
The invention described below addresses these disadvantages, providing integration of payment accounts and an electronic wallet.